In "The Musicla Instrument" Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses the story of Pan to show the differnce between art and nature. She shows that while art is beautiful, it also is destruction. The use of Pan is important becuase he's a god but he's also half goat. Because he's a god, this poem says that he consequences of beauty are universal and not limited to humas. Pan is also a goat, an animal, which explains his willingness to do something good while not caring about the consequences. This is showing the animal we have in all of us. In lines three and four when the poet illustrates the search for a reed, “deep”, “cool”, “turbidly”, “limpid” are contradictory terms, the author is using these to reinforce that the art has a beautiful part and a destructive part, which are also contradictory. In lines ten and eleven use images of the dead lilies and the flight of the dragonfly to show the destructive side of art. In the third stanza it uses descrptive words like “hacked” and “hewed” to emphasize words the destruction and damage Pan is doing to the reed. This also creates sympathy for the reed because Browning describes it as patient, meaning enduring pain with calmness. There is nothing that reed can do to overpower Pan. The sixth stanza says that the music was so beautiful that the lilies grew back, the dragonfly returned, and the sun didn’t set. This stanza shows us the beauty of the music that can make up for the destruction caused by the creation of art. The next stanza says that the true gods sigh for the cost and pain of the reed. It mentions, also, that Pan’s half animal body. This describes the anmial in all of us because we still make arnt even though there are consequences, the gods only think of the destruction of the reed, it’s a symbolism of life. Two poetic devices that are used in the poem are repition and simile. The repition in the poem puts emphasis on “the great god Pan” and “the river” creating an image that builds while you read the poem. The similie that is used is “then drew the pith like the heart of a man”, pith is like a spong, like center of most stems. When the poet uses the smilie of compairing it to the heart of man she is saying that Pan has killed the reed by taking out its “heart”. |
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May 2015
AuthorsFocused, determined, and a whole lot sassy: Mrs. Costisick's AP Literature students want you to delve into the ostentatious world of poetry with them as they augment their own understanding of some of the most famous writings known to us. No Dr. Seuss here. Categories |